sundries

[rm]

Patty leaves today. I'm super busy. Talk amongst yourselves.

Yeah, I totally booked a little spa thing for us at the St. Davids last night. Hahahahahahahaah. I know.

As breast cancer treatments get more effective, mammograms may be less helpful. This and the choices that go with it is the sort of stuff that keeps me awake at night.

You should read reannon's morning random today for her coverage of the impending execution of Teresa Lewis, a woman living with a mental disability. You should know I oppose the death penalty, because even if we can agree there are some crimes people should die for, it's not a business I want my government in. This case is one example of why.

eredien wrote a really long post that expands on what I was trying to say the other day about the lack of queer representation in media and how it's a legitimate part of whether or not I respond to an entertainment property with interest. I'm still really upset about that entire situation, btw, but so it goes. Let's have some Covert Affairs fandom, right here!

I may have cadged the ticket I want to the Paley Center thing, in a standby sort of way, which makes me wonder just how early I should get on that line -- it's a fine line between effective and crazy. But I'm not even sure of this much yet.

There's this random sentence in the Pam Cook book, that while making perfect sense, sort of comes out of nowhere and immediately recedes back to same. I assume there may have been another tangent that came off of it that then went away in editing, such that the sentence just hangs there:

"... cinemas as illusion, and the construction of imaginary worlds into which one could escape without being incarcerated."

Um, is that generally a concern with imaginary worlds? Also, could an Aussie tell me if incarceration implies prison or mental-health related hospitalization more in your English? Is this the author's version of referencing Snape's Wives?

Everything is performance, maybe: Stephen Colbert will be testifying before Congress, on a serious issue, and some are claiming it will happen in character.

Has anyone seen Catfish? Do I need to care? Or is this just another installment in this year's on-the-Internet-no-one-knows-you're-a-dog there's-no-such-thing-as-the-truth movie meme?

There is way too much video porn and shoe shopping spam on LJ today. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much. LJ is also being somewhat uneven with comment delivery today.

This may be more of a challenge than I'm up for and not really my format (short is not my forte) or medium, but I'm still very tempted.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm odd enough that I never feel like there will be that many characters like me, and that's okay.

But to go back to two shows I keep talking about:

On Covert Affairs everyone is, as far as we know, straight. And, until various interpersonal relationships became integral to the "everyone is a lying liar who lies" plot that I now really like, there was a lot of time wasted on girls worrying if a boy would like their hair or a married couple feeling alarm about whether they're having enough sex or whether the wife will still respect the husband if he loses his jobs. Gender and sexuality then drove the discussion of these things, and to me it's not just boring (as it is for a lot of straight people who aren't those straight people), but so weirdly prideful. And it makes me react like I'm some sort of failure for not having those anxieties.

On the other hand, theres Torchwood, which, to be fair, in a lot of ways in its first two seasons is a terrible show. Queerness is everywhere in it as background noise (only ocassionally rising to the level of plot point) and while the dramas many of the queer relationships have also aren't mine, they don't instinctively feel to me like a value judgment. That value judgment issue is largely about my own damage living in this world we do, but the fact is, it's nice to watch TV that doesn't, even if it's all my fault really, make me hate myself.

Also, I happily take gender non-comformity where I can get it -- for all I complain about White Collar not being quite sure what it's on about, the male friendship and the male vanity it showcases alongside competent feminine women (including the awesomest straight wife on TV, and a very cool lesbian character), means that I can watch it and accept its existence in my world because it would clearly accept someone like me in its.

Or, to go back to Torchwood -- Jack's not just a bisexual action hero, he flirts like a girl. In fact the body language on that show not matching gender stereotypes and expectations is nearly constant. And it's a small thing it took me a while to put my finger on, but it's why the show with the inconsistent writing and the rubber suit aliens works for me so much.

I am, at the end of the day, maybe the worst person to ask this question to, simply because I don't ever become engaged with stories I can't, in some way, see as being about me. I don't know if that's mental illness or being an only child, just being vain or ultimately a failure of imagination or what, but it's how I am.

Covert Affairs worked very hard at the beginning to feel a certain way, that for me, felt like a show that could never be about me. White Collar whose lesbian character's lesbianism is pretty much never a plot point, doesn't feel that way. Not just because of the lesbian, but because things happen other than the gender expectations of several decades ago. (which is to say, yes, the first two episodes of Covert Affairs, which ultimately redeemed itself in some ways, were that bad).

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Gender and sexuality then drove the discussion of these things, and to me it's not just boring (as it is for a lot of straight people who aren't those straight people), but so weirdly prideful.

Interesting. I think I know the kind of weird pride you're talking about from many other places in television and film (and likely the only reason I don't know it from Covert Affairs is that I'm not watching it), and if so, it's that emotional tone that makes a great deal of what our culture produces as "entertainment" unwatchable for me. But I see it around so many kinds of issues that I find it permeates entire shows; it's not that I'm comfortable with them outside of the smugness about gender presentation, but rather that the smugness is everywhere and drives me from the audience before the characters have even met their eventual romantic interests.

But as I said, I think I'm perceiving the same ickiness you're perceiving, even if we don't react to it in the same ways. And I do understand why a person would want to see that fixed on aesthetic grounds.

Beyond that, though -- well, I think you may have hit the core of the issue when you say I don't ever become engaged with stories I can't, in some way, see as being about me. Far from blaming it on some quirkiness of yours, I'm inclined to think that you're in the majority. At least, a great many people seem to talk about having characters to identify with, and role modeling, and being able to see themselves in stories, and erasure when they don't; and when those conversations happen other people seem to understand what they're saying. You don't find a lot of us saying, "Okay, but why do you even care?"

Which leads me to think that I'm the weirdo here. Not you.